Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy

13 reviews

cecropiansea's review

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dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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elderwoodreads's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

I would definitely recommend this as an audiobook to listen to while doing something like a craft - or even gardening! I found that Dungy moved from topic to topic in a way that I, personally, would find hard to follow if I was reading on paper or tried to concentrate on fully I would find hard to follow. I really enjoyed her storytelling, and she did a great job of weaving together experiences from her garden and the real world. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who likes gardening especially if you are trying to move towards the native plant/naturalist sphere. 
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thebookcoyote's review

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

 TW/CW: Racism, murder, police brutality, natural disasters, death 

REVIEW: I received a free copy of this book from Edelweiss Books and Simon & Schuster and am voluntarily writing an honest review. 
Soil is a memoir, the story of a Black poet and mother who works to transform her Colorado lawn into a natural, diversified place that matches and strengthens the natural landscape around it. This garden becomes a metaphor for her life and history as she relates her garden, ecology and nature to the political and sociological realities of Black people, women, and mothers. 
This is a beautiful story. Although I’m not an expert on plants or flowers, you don’t have to be to enjoy this book. Dungy’s writing is beautiful and often poetic (not a surprise since the author is a poet), and her talent with words causes her stories to hit deeper than they otherwise might. There is a great deal of sadness in this book, but there is also a great deal of beauty. 
The one thing that bothered me about this book is that there were parts where it didn’t really seem to flow. It was kind of choppy in places and would drift back and forth from one topic to another without much of a segue. This isn’t something that makes me dislike this book – not at all – but I think it could have been even more powerful and beautiful if it was a little more organized. 
As a whole, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in gardening, Black voices, and/or ecology. 
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